AD on Bron's defense:"He did it the last series with James Harden."

Hilarious! Excluding poor shooting night in game 5 but 10 assists in that game, JH was pretty damn good in the series.

Does AD mean Lebron’s defense kept him from going off in the series despite over 30 ppg and shooting 50% from the field in the series was good D then yes!

 

never said either one of those thing, just seen your lazy “rhetoric” over and over. And you disappear after great games, come out firing when we lose and he looks bad. It is what it is. I find you more annoying than the Lakers and Dodgers fans combined.

 

If westbrick wasn't such a retrrd, can't shoot useless piece of crap...then we don't be talking about this crap

 

lol at bringing up Curry...what a garbage point when u completely ignore all context

Curry plays with Klay and Draymond, and also played with KD for 3 years...no sh*t he won’t be getting doubled at all times...KD didn’t even get doubled in GS...u can’t double when a roster is that stacked

put him next to a complete non shooter in Russ who teams were just ignoring and all these low skill role players, and tell me Steph wouldn’t be seeing the most doubles and traps he’s ever seen in his life by far

and yes, the main reason he’s getting doubled is because he’s THAT GOOD...Denver is the one who started the doubling at halfcourt, and they did it because at that point in the season Harden was averaging 39.2 ppg on 62% TS...this after averaging 36 ppg the previous year

Lakers didn’t double in game 1, and Harden had an easy 36 points on 12-20 shooting in 34 minutes...of course they will decide to double him at all times moving forward...Who is gonna make them pay? Russ and his trash shooting and even worse decision making? The low skill bricklayers? Double or trap Steph, and Draymond will feast on 4 on 3 situations, or Klay and KD would kill. Double Harden, and let Russ make a fool of himself.

 

Pelicans decided to relentlessly double Lillard in the 2018 playoffs, so I just need to know why all his off ball movement and running around couldn’t stop him from getting neutralized...

he averaged 17.8 shots a game in that series playing 40.5 minutes a game

 

the only teams that won’t relentlessly double Harden in a playoff series with non-shooting, idiotic Russ and low skill role players as his surrounding talent are stupid ones, or teams who have a perimeter defender they 100% believe in like OKC with Dort

Who are the Lakers perimeter defenders? Caruso, Green, KCP, Bron, and Rondo. Not a single one in that group could even come close to slowing down Harden. No sh*t they’re gonna double at all times, especially after what happened in game 1.

making it seem like the main reason teams are just relentlessly doubling Harden is because he’s so easy to double and doesn’t move is such a dumb fcking narrative

if Harden wasn’t coming off a 36 ppg season and wasn’t averaging close to 40 to start the 19-20 season, he never would’ve seen so many doubles...if Harden wasn’t playing with a non-shooter like Russ, he never would’ve seen so many doubles

Where were all the doubles back when Harden was averaging 29-30 ppg or wasn’t playing next to Russ? We hardly ever saw them, and he was still the same guy not running around off-ball.

use common sense...

rant over

 

agreed

it’s obvious to anyone with a brain who doesn’t have an agenda as to why we started seeing doubling to a level never before seen in NBA history...it’s because it became apparent that if single coverage defense on Harden continued, he was likely to average 38-40 ppg on the season with excellent efficiency unless he just broke down from exhaustion later in the season and dipped down to 36-37 ppg...and it’s also because with Russ who teams can just ignore, it makes it even easier to commit to heavy doubling

Russ had a stretch where he was able to feast off of that attention, but the Russ we saw in the playoffs? Why wouldn’t u double Harden from the tip every time down? Russ could not shoot, and was happy to take jumpers. He couldn’t finish. His passing was buns. His dribbling and decision making was trash. The other ballhandlers were EG who has no court vision and is also a dumb player, and Austin Rivers who flat out sucked. Jeff Green had some occasional brilliance, but Jeff Green is not getting any coach to change their game plan. So yeah, if your team doesn’t have an elite defender u can trust to contain Harden, double away with impunity. U could never double Steph like that, and it’s because Klay, Draymond, and KD>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Russ, PJ, and Roco...

with Chris Paul, there would be no doubling like this...it could also be a Kyle Lowry, Kemba, etc...basically any good PG that can make good decisions and shoot, and we would never see this absurd amount of doubling

however, the main reason is because of Harden’s dominance...if he was still that same 29-30 ppg guy, even next to Russ, I don’t think the doubles would be coming like this unless he was on fire, but he established over these past 2 years that unless u have a premier defender on your roster, it is likely he goes for 40+

 

They doubled Harden most of the time. How was that a challenge for LeBron's defense?

And if anyone has no fear of the ref calling defensive foul, he can play a lot better defense too.

 

what was the most jarring to me was his decline in dribbling and passing...they both looked well below average for a guard in the playoffs...all his passes weren’t even close...he seriously played like he wasn’t able to grip the ball...everything was insanely sloppy and loose...I expect his shooting to be trash, but how is a guard also that bad at handling the ball and passing? And then people think we should’ve given him the ball more in the playoffs.

people keep having this dream where we put Harden off ball and give the rock to the likes of Russ and EG to initiate offense, and they’ll make good decisions...the only time Russ looked good this season was when he was taking advantage of playing off of Harden...even when he was at his best, the team still sucked when he was on the floor without Harden

yeah, no coach is doing anything of note with the Russ we saw for around the 1st 30 games of this season, or the Russ we saw in the playoffs. Both versions are a net negative

 

After they sent single coverage in game one Harden absolutely Shredded them to pieces henceforth they decided Harden needs to be stopped or limited at all costs. That’s why they started doubling James from game 2 and onwards not because he was “lazy off the ball”..

 

As much as Russ' decision making looked especially bad, I also just felt he never got his timing back since the first game he came back against OKC and for all 5 games against the Lakers. He's never been great at clutch decision making or efficiency, but I think the injury took his weaknesses and highlighted them that much more and thus made his value look way worse than where he probably would'veaveraged out at. Some of those passes he was making were unusually off target ... So as much as he looked roughly athletic for his standards, I still think the injury made him look way worse than he was pre-injury. I don't think a healthy russ would have got us over the lakers but the way we went out I think made his stock take a huge hit.

On another note, I'm in agreement with Russ' inability to run a team with harden off the floor. It wasn't fair to just expect him to do that in the same way cp3 did in 2017-2018 where first quarter leads would swing from 8 to 20 by the time harden came back on the floor. It was a little wishful thinking to hope it would.

I'm not really sure what kind of player Russ becomes now that he's moving into the pivotal time when players' athleticism diminishes and their iq and skills have to compensate even more. And in our situation, I don't know how he thrives as a second star without us doing away from a traditional big longterm.

 

if we got a great coach, acquired a nice big that can shoot/space the floor, bolstered the bench with guys that are versatile/playable in the playoffs, and he played on the level that he was at from January to the Covid shutdown in terms of scoring, efficiency, and smarts, then yeah, but that’s the only way I could see it

that’s a lot of ifs, and you’d have to believe that he could play on that level for an entire playoff run which is highly unlikely, so I’m gonna say no...too flawed, and does too many dumb things

 

I feel some of that as well...we don’t truly know how much contracting Covid and then getting that quad injury affected him...I want to believe that sitting out 2 weeks and then being thrust into playoff intensity while rusty was the primary cause for this atrocious play because my god, that level of ball handling, passing, and decision making was so ridiculously bad, it was almost laughable

I don’t believe in small ball, so I hope we scrap that. I’m hoping we get 1 or 2 bigs this offseason. I’m thinking our primary target for a starting C should be a big that can shoot, and then maybe sign someone like a Nerlens Noel for cheap to come off the bench. Play the spacing big man when Harden and Russ are both on the court, and then when Russ is on the court without Harden, I think we should try to recreate what he had in OKC. We should try to create Russ-only lineups that are excellent defensively, and give him a big to run PnR like he did in OKC. Surely he’s still capable of doing dump off passes and alley oops like he was doing with Adams right? Russ always generated mediocre team offense while in OKC, but lineups would still be a positive because of elite defense. That’s the only way we survive Russ-only lineups IMO.

 

I don't remember Bron specifically matching up with Harden defensively, I don't think this is an accurate statement. They did have good team defense on him though with double teams, help and such.

 

exactly. he had a sweet 9.5 PER in that series. 9.5!!! clutchfans would've burned down the toyota center if harden did that. that's what it looks like when a team decides to double relentlessly and you're a level below james harden. no one successfully dominates double teams. the '96 sonics double/tripled hakeem as much as any team ever did and it was easily hakeem's worst statistical series from his otherworldly 93-97 playoff run. double teams basically stop everyone, no matter how good, and force the rest of the team to win the game. when the cavs doubled curry all the time in the '15 finals, he mostly just lobbed a slow pass over the double (being shorter like curry/harden is also tougher) and let draymond take it from there. it wasn't him sprinting back into the play and running around that made it work. it was draymond having elite dribbling/passing skills for a "big" along with golden state's other shooters/passers that made 4 on 3 work.

 

LeBron shut down Murray and Jokic

Rocket River